 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Mametz Wood is closely associated with soldiers from Wales. The wood was an objective of the 38th Division and they attacked on the 7th of July but were beaten back by severe machine gun fire. Two senior officers (Haig and Rawlinson) were not best pleased at the stuttering attack and replaced the officer in command on the ground. On July the 10th a huge force attacked the German lines with the rather unequivocal order to capture the whole wood. Two days later the men achieved this, but with a terrible death and injury rate. Over four thousand men were killed or injured here. Fricourt is a small village nearby. Our stop here was largely at my insistence as it was one of the sites where Manfred von Richthofen was buried. The grave now holds the body of another German soldier, but there’s an informative board telling the bizarre tale of his many burials. He was originally buried by the British at Bertangles close to Amiens. He was then moved to this spot to be buried with his fellow countrymen. In 1925 von Richthofen was moved again, this time to the Invaliden Cemetery in Berlin alongside some of Germany’s great names. In 1975 he was moved for a final (for now) time to Wiesbaden in Südfriedhof to his family plot. A bizarre end to an exceptional life. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
